iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Adam Quinn @adamquinnphd.com · 30/08/2026

Critical mineral (water) shortage

Adam Quinn @adamquinnphd.com · 14/07/2026

Open call for contributions to a panel at SHOT (remote, 10/22-25) on automation and environment in historical perspective. Abstracts for contributions due by 7/18. www.historyoftechnology.org/annual-meeti...

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Adam Quinn @adamquinnphd.com · 09/07/2026

Excited to share that I've accepted a tenure-track position in the History of Technology at the University of Texas at Dallas! Now to find out if I can pull off a cowboy hat...

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Adam Quinn @adamquinnphd.com · 29/04/2026

The Apple TV exec who greenlighted For All Mankind with the knowledge that by season 4 they could do constant product placement with retro iPods on Mars

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Adam Quinn @adamquinnphd.com · 18/04/2026

Excited and honored to share that my dissertation was awarded the Gutman Prize for Outstanding Dissertation from @lawcha.bsky.social. It was incredibly fulfilling and validating to receive this recognition in a room full of the historians who inspired my research.

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Adam Quinn @adamquinnphd.com · 15/04/2026

how paying Philadelphia city taxes feels

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Adam Quinn @adamquinnphd.com · 15/04/2026

The longest Hampshire evaluation I received was by @citizenwald.bsky.social for my final Div 3 project (sharp contrast with a letter grade). The project gave me hands-on experience in history, and the extraordinary depth of advising and feedback now serves as a model as I begin to mentor others.

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Adam Quinn @adamquinnphd.com · 15/04/2026

Hampshire's narrative evaluations were more useful than a grade, allowing me to recognize and remember what I did well or could improve on in each class in detail. They were also sometimes fun, as in this alliterative one I received from mathematician David Kelly for Puzzles and Paradoxes.

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Adam Quinn @adamquinnphd.com · 11/04/2026

Grand opening of the history of fireworks special exhibit at the Science History Institute in Philly, fitting for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence

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Adam Quinn @adamquinnphd.com · 03/04/2026

From Reid Wiseman/NASA: new image of our planet, with the aurora borealis visible at the edge

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Adam Quinn @adamquinnphd.com · 18/03/2026

FDR visiting areas impacted by the Dust Bowl in 1936

Bulbasaur with a speech bubble saying "Let's get this place HUMID!"

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Adam Quinn @adamquinnphd.com · 17/02/2026

How it sounds when someone says they can do a PhD in an afternoon with the power of AI

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Adam Quinn @adamquinnphd.com · 07/02/2026

wow this guy really does not like Kevin

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Adam Quinn @adamquinnphd.com · 02/02/2026

Photo of Anthropic's alleged warehouse full of books to scan, train AI, and destroy

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Adam Quinn @adamquinnphd.com · 22/01/2026

A survey of 5000 people shows a massive difference in how workers vs. management report how much time AI saves them

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Adam Quinn @adamquinnphd.com · 12/01/2026

Defense attorney: "You know who else in Pennsylvania had hundreds of illegally sourced human bones hidden in their house? Benjamin Franklin. [pauses for applause that doesn't happen]"

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Adam Quinn @adamquinnphd.com · 09/01/2026

Today, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics published data that showed workers' share of business income is the lowest *ever recorded.* By this metric, workers now receive a smaller cut of the revenue they generate than at any other time in recent history.

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Adam Quinn @adamquinnphd.com · 01/01/2026

The reactionary vibe shift of 2025 has ended. Socialism was inaugurated in New York City in the first few minutes of the new year. Prepare for Woke 6.

Image of the architect from the matrix with the caption "this will be the sixth time we have implemented woke and we have become exceedingly efficient at it"

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Adam Quinn @adamquinnphd.com · 16/12/2025

Currently in Helsinki for a history of science workshop

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Adam Quinn @adamquinnphd.com · 30/11/2025

December 4 at 10am @ UMich and on Zoom, I'll be talking about the labor & environmental impacts of AI in historical context. Computing's long history of automation & pollution reframes how we understand capitalism in the digital age. Register for free: sessions.studentlife.umich.edu/track/event/...

Flyer for event with QR code (main details all in the above post)

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Adam Quinn @adamquinnphd.com · 24/11/2025

A pretty Fall morning in my country, Philadelphia

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Adam Quinn @adamquinnphd.com · 19/11/2025

I don't think toddlers should be doing all that @nytimes.com

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Adam Quinn @adamquinnphd.com · 14/11/2025

*lack of coeherence. cohernance?

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Adam Quinn @adamquinnphd.com · 05/11/2025

The AI Coca-Cola ad seems to have involved as many workers and expenses as their traditional ads. Generative AI won't fully replace jobs and give us a 12 hour workweek. It'll just save time on some tasks while making roles more rote, deskilled, and alienating. That's how labor automation works!

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Adam Quinn @adamquinnphd.com · 05/11/2025

The votes are in four years later: unions and @organizeworkers.bsky.social confirmed cool

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Adam Quinn @adamquinnphd.com · 29/10/2025

Talk I gave yesterday; the "Wild West" title refers to how two Silicon Valley firefighters I interviewed from separate fire departments both called Silicon Valley the "Wild West" due to the chemical fires, explosions, and toxic leaks in the under-regulated 20th century electronics industry.

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Adam Quinn @adamquinnphd.com · 26/10/2025

Sorry but you have to change your clocks and mess up your sleep schedule because someone over a century ago wanted to sell more cigars.

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Adam Quinn @adamquinnphd.com · 21/10/2025

It also appears that the AI Bed that doesn't work during an AWS outage has a $200 per year subscription and inexplicably uses about as much data per month as the average smartphone

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Adam Quinn @adamquinnphd.com · 21/10/2025

My personal favorite bit of the AWS outage so far: "my AI Bed is down and won't let me sleep"

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Adam Quinn @adamquinnphd.com · 17/10/2025

Historian here, to be annoying to the Philly influencer accounts

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Adam Quinn @adamquinnphd.com · 16/10/2025

The top downloader this year of my old master's thesis on the First Red Scare is a law firm. Maybe not a great sign for how society is doing.

From: UVM ScholarWorks
Dear Author,
You had 124 new downloads in September 2025 across your 1 paper in UVM ScholarWorks. Your current readership:

3099 Total Downloads

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Adam Quinn @adamquinnphd.com · 02/10/2025

I saw this chart on the other site. I don't think ChatGPT alone caused this divergence; other things like interest rates factor in. But it is revealing of how AI investment, like monetary policy, was intended to help "correct" the leverage workers gained in the hot labor market of early Covid.

Chart that shows total job openings and the S&P 500 correlating until ChatGPT was released, after which point stocks increased while jobs decreased

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Adam Quinn @adamquinnphd.com · 30/09/2025

Judge Young (a Reagan appointee) ruled in favor of the AAUP/AFT and against Trump for punishing immigrant students for pro-Palestine speech. His decision remarks that the government's campaign goes "beyond its closest analogues in the Red Scare." Here's how he starts the decision off:

A photocopied letter reads "Trump has pardons and tanks.... what do you have?" The judge responds "Alone, i have nothing but my sense of duty. Together, we the people of the united states - you and me - have our magnificent constitution. Here's how that works out in a specific case.

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Adam Quinn @adamquinnphd.com · 27/09/2025

Some photos from my last couple of trips to "War ravaged Portland"

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Adam Quinn @adamquinnphd.com · 26/09/2025

In light of the new presidential memorandum on countering political violence and terrorism, it's worth noting that Miller just posted that merely calling ICE authoritarian "incites violence and terrorism."

Miller: This language incites violence and terrorism

Newsom: ICE's activities are "authoritarian activities by an authoritarian government"

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Adam Quinn @adamquinnphd.com · 25/09/2025

explaining being in awe of nature to an American: "imagine a community"

Tweet from Ashley Reese: I WILL become a nationalist over the majesty of American landscapes.

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Adam Quinn @adamquinnphd.com · 24/09/2025

Home building corporation Lennar just reported their average home sales prices are now below pre-Covid levels.

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Adam Quinn @adamquinnphd.com · 24/08/2025

This kind of smart, walkable, Shrek-use urbanism would be illegal to build in most non-Philly cities

Sidewalk with a bright green painted newspaper box labeled Shrek Box

Shrek themed knick knacks inside the Shrek Box

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Adam Quinn @adamquinnphd.com · 21/08/2025

Times are tough out there, they got Sheryl Crow working at the fortune cookie factory

Fortune cookie fortune that says Happiness isn't having what you want but rather in wanting what you have

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Adam Quinn @adamquinnphd.com · 18/08/2025

Somehow, Sid from Ice Age returned

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Adam Quinn @adamquinnphd.com · 01/07/2025

Excited to share that I'm moving to Philadelphia to join the Science History Institute as a Haas Postdoctoral Research Fellow. I'll be working on my book project "The Nature of Computing: The Making of Computers and the Remaking of American Capitalism." www.sciencehistory.org/about/news/s...

Adam Quinn
Haas Postdoctoral Fellow
Adam Quinn is a historian who studies the roles of work and the environment in the history of the United States computer industry. As a postdoctoral fellow with the Beckman Center for the History of Chemistry at the Science History Institute, he will focus on the labor that went into researching materials like high-purity silicon and the chemical processes of transforming these materials into computer components. This research will underscore the materiality of digital technology and its connections to the histories of chemistry, capitalism, pollution, and occupational health.

Adam earned his PhD in history from the University of Oregon in 2025. His dissertation was supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation/Center for Environmental Futures/Just Futures Institute. His work has been published in Time, the Radical History Review, and Smithsonian Contributions to History and Technology.

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Adam Quinn @adamquinnphd.com · 13/06/2025

I'll be on this cool panel on technology and worker power at LAWCHA in Chicago on Friday morning, if anyone is interested and awake!

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Adam Quinn @adamquinnphd.com · 30/05/2025

I successfully defended my dissertation on the labor and environmental history of computers at the University of Oregon today! #PhDone

A photograph of a person in a green shirt holding a laptop with the dissertation title "computer capitalism: labor, environment, and health in the history of the US computer industry"

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Adam Quinn @adamquinnphd.com · 19/05/2025

Dissertation submitted to my committee!

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Adam Quinn @adamquinnphd.com · 04/05/2025

How it started / how it's going

Newspaper ad from 1979 reading: Dear Maggie, May the Fourth Be with You.

Post from the White House twitter that says: "Happy May the 4th to all, including the Radical Left Lunatics who are fighting so hard to to bring Sith Lords, Murderers, Drug Lords, Dangerous Prisoners, & well known MS-13 Gang Members, back into our Galaxy. You’re not the Rebellion—you’re the Empire.

May the 4th be with you." Followed by an AI image of a buff Trump holding a red lightsaber.

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Adam Quinn @adamquinnphd.com · 04/05/2025

The first recorded use of "May the Fourth Be With You" is from a pro-Thatcher ad in the London Evening Standard when she was elected on May 4th, 1979. I am pro Star Wars and take no pleasure in reporting this.

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Adam Quinn @adamquinnphd.com · 27/04/2025

Historians when there's something slightly uncertain about Jar Jar

Photo of George Lucas with the caption "jar jar is constantly being debated"

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